Tarawa Cemetery 8

The isolated grave of Corporal Hubert Clayton Luther of Company I, Third Battalion, 2nd Marines. Luther, a thirty-year-old squad leader from Smith Center, Kansas, came ashore on Beach Red One. He organized the survivors of his squad to attack a Japanese 40mm gun that was raining havoc on the landing beaches and succeeded in destroying the weapon and its crew with hand grenades before being killed in turn. For this feat, he received a posthumous Navy Cross.

The only known photograph of Luther’s grave shows decorative shell casings, and a rather unusual addition: a pebble-filled helmet suspended from a tripod like a cooking kettle. The significance of this tribute – and who placed it there, since Luther’s comrades were long gone from the island – is not known. An incorrect date of death was painted on his cross.

Cemetery 8 was one of the first, if not the very first, graves exhumed by the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company in 1946. They broke ground for Lone Palm Cemetery on 9 March; on 18 March, Corporal Luther was buried in Plot 1, Row 1, Grave 1.