Donald Samuel Spayd

Donald Spayd was born in Owantonna, Minnesota, on 26 November 1923. He lived in Sioux City, Iowa and Hastings, Nebraska, before moving to California around the age of seven. The family settled in South Los Angeles; father Samuel worked as a cigar maker, while Bertha (Cope) Spayd kept house. Samuel suffered from poor health and was occasionally hospitalized in Sawtelle, so the Spayds took in the odd lodger to help make ends meet.

Don attended George Washington Preparatory High School, and went on to take classes at Los Angeles City College. By the summer of 1942, he was employed by the Armour Meat Packing Company and entertaining thoughts of joining the service.

Don Spayd enlisted in the Marine Corps on 13 December 1942. After boot camp at San Diego and infantry school at Camp Elliott, he was assigned to a replacement draft and sent overseas to New Zealand – and in the summer of 1943 joined Fox Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines at Camp Paekakariki.

This unit would be Private Spayd’s home for the rest of his life. He embarked on yet another round of training – this time, however, the tactics were more advanced, the exercises more realistic, and his instructors combat veterans of Guadalcanal. In his spare time, the lanky Californian probably enjoyed liberty in Wellington, or exploring the unfamiliar sights of New Zealand.

In October 1943, 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.

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 Private Donald Spayd. He was reported simply as “killed in action” by “bullet wounds” – 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. Don Spayd was one of the men buried here in “Division Cemetery 3” – however, this would not be known for many years to come.

Spayd’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. (Spayd had an individual memorial marker in Cemetery 11, Plot 5, Row 3, Grave 8 – 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.


Laboratory work including dental and anthropological analysis, plus the material evidence of the dog tag, solved the mystery of Don Spayd’s fate. In November 1943, he had been interred in Division Cemetery 3 as an unknown. An official identification was made on 9 March 2017, and Spayd’s remains were returned to his family for burial later that year.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Arlington National Cemetery