Anthony Brozyna

Anthony Brozyna was born in Hartford, Connecticut on 11 May 1921. He spent most of his youth in and around the city with his parents, John and Theresa (Babula) Brozyna, and five siblings. Little is publicly known about his life before the war; by 1942, when he registered for Selective Service, “Tony” Brozyna was running his own newspaper stand on the corner of Allyn and Union Place – a prime location right next to the busy Hartford Union train station.

Brozyna enlisted in the Marine Corps on 13 May 1942, and was soon on his way to Parris Island for boot camp. That July, he was sent to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina to join George Company, Second Battalion, 3rd Marines. Brozyna crossed the country with the 3rd Marines and sailed from San Diego, California in August 1942.

Instead of heading for the fighting in the Solomon Islands, the SS Lurline took Brozyna and his buddies to Tutuila, Samoa, for garrison duty. Another regiment, the 8th Marines, was making ready to leave for action, and Brozyna was one of the men chosen to fill out the ranks. On 22 September 1942, he was taken up on the rolls of Geoge Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines.

In late October, the 8th Marines sailed for the Solomon Islands and joined the battle for Guadalcanal on 4 November 1942. Unfortunately, any stories of Tony Brozyna’s experiences during the campaign have since been lost; he managed to survive three months of combat without serious illness or injury, and in February 1943 sailed for New Zealand.

During the spring and summer of 1943, the 8th Marines rested and re-trained at Camp Paekakariki. Like many of his fellow combat veterans, Brozyna spent several stretches in sick bays and field hospitals, likely the result of a tropical disease contracted on Guadalcanal. When he wasn’t training or in the hospital, Brozyna must have enjoyed himself on liberty in Wellington – especially after his long-awaited promotion to Private First Class went into effect.

That October – almost exactly a year since they departed Samoa for Guadalcanal – the 8th Marines boarded transports at Wellington for a final round of training exercises. When the ships headed out to sea instead of returning to town, the Marines aboard began to realize that the rumors were true: they were bound for combat once again.

The amphibious assault on Betio, Tarawa atoll – Operation GALVANIC – commenced on 20 November 1943. The Second Battalion 8th Marines was given the job of assaulting the easternmost of three landing beaches – “Red 3” – and, once ashore, moving inland to quickly secure the airfield that covered much of the tiny island’s surface. A heavy and morale-boosting naval bombardment convinced many Marines that the task would be a simple one, and spirits were high at 0900 when their amphibious tractors started paddling for the beach.

The Japanese were quick to recover. Shells began bursting over the LVTs. “As the tractors neared the shore the air filled with the smoke and fragments of shells fired from 3-inch guns,” notes A Brief History of the 8th Marines. “Fortunately, casualties had been light on the way to the beach, but once the men dismounted and struggled to get beyond the beach, battle losses increased dramatically.” Most of the beach defenses were still intact, and these were supported by row after row of pillboxes, rifle pits, and machine gun nests.


The Second Battalion, and then the Third Battalion, tried in vain to break through the Japanese defenses, suffering heavy casualties in every attempt. By evening, they were barely clinging to a sliver of beachhead, and the shocked survivors dug in among the bodies of the dead.

One of those who fell in action on the first day was PFC Brozyna. He was reported simply as “killed in action” – no other specifics of his fate are known.

It took two days for the dead men on Beach Red 3 to be buried. A long trench was bulldozed near the pier, and more than forty Marines were carried over and laid down under their ponchos. Anthony Brozyna was one of the men interred in what was then called “Division Cemetery 3.”

Broznya’s burial ground was “beautified” by Navy garrison troops in 1944 and renamed Cemetery 27. A single large cross was put up and the names of the fallen were painted on a plaque nearby. (Brozyna had an individual memorial marker in Cemetery 11, Plot 1, Row 1, Grave 4 – but this was purely ceremonial.)

When the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company arrived to exhume the battle casualties in 1946, however, they found not a trace of any remains beneath the monument – nor anywhere nearby. After days of searching in vain, they gave up and declared the 40 men permanently nonrecoverable.

In 2015, the non-profit group History Flight conducted an archaeological dig at a shipyard on Betio. This expedition, the result of years of research and data supplied by GPR and a cadaver dog, found the original burial trench beneath a parking lot – quite some distance from the memorial location. The remains of 46 men were recovered by History Flight and turned over to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency for forensic analysis.

Further laboratory work, centered around dental records and material evidence, confirmed the original reports about Brozyna’s burial place. His remains were identified on 6 April 2016; later that year, PFC Anthony Brozyna received his long-overdue burial in American soil.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Arlington National Cemetery