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accounted for

The Fourth Row

How a row of thirty graves on Betio was laid out and then lost, forgotten and then found.

Silver Stars

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They were not friends in life, these men. They were not even passing strangers. Each spent the short arc of his life in total ignorance of the other’s existence. Outwardly, they had little in common – a small, stolid Massachusetts Yankee and a tall, imposing blacksmith’s son from Louisiana – save the Marine uniform both wore with pride from 1940 until their deaths on remote Pacific islands, a world away from Springfield and Chatham. Yet they shared a selfless inner quality that shone through in the final hours and minutes of their lives – and their deaths would mark the start of seven decades of uncertainty for two families far apart.

PFC Francis E. Drake, Jr. and Second Lieutenant Harvel L. Moore

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