Accounted For: Fred Farris
Sergeant Fred Farris, killed in action at Tarawa while serving with I/3/2nd Marines, has been accounted for according to a DPAA press release.
silver star
Accounted For: Justin G. Mills
1Lt. Justin Green Mills, killed in action at Tarawa while serving with C/1/2nd Marines, has been accounted for according to a DPAA press release.
Silver Stars
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