Donald E. Anderson

Donald Anderson was born to Elmer and Olga Anderson of Chicago, Illinois. Prior to the war, he worked as an elevator boy.

Anderson enlisted on September 9, 1942, and was sent to at MCRD San Diego. He was hospitalized not long after completing boot camp, which delayed his training somewhat; he was still rated as a private when he joined Company D, 24th Marines in the summer of 1943. Anderson served as an ammunition carrier for a heavy machine gun squad in the company’s second platoon; he was promoted to Private First Class on New Year’s Day 1944, and one month later made his first combat landing on Namur in the Marshall Islands. His battalion returned to Camp Maui in March, and spent the rest of the spring in training.

PFC Anderson landed on Saipan on June 15, 1944. Just hours after he splashed ashore, an enemy shell hit his gun position, killing or wounding the entire crew. Anderson, in great pain from a shrapnel wound to his right thigh, was evacuated to the USS Leon and thence to the USS Storm King, which returned him to Hawaii for treatment at Naval Hospital #128.

After being released from the hospital, Anderson spent a month at a Marine convalescent center. He was deemed unfit to return to combat duty, and thus was transferred back to the 6th Base Depot at Pearl Harbor, the main Marine depot in the Hawaiian Islands. Anderson was promoted to corporal on January 2, 1945, and spent the rest of the war as a clerk with the depot’s engineering company.

In October, after the Japanese surrender, Anderson returned to Company B. He traveled back to the United States with them, and was honorably discharged in Chicago on October 28, 1945.

Donald Anderson died in 1984. He is buried in Swedish Cemetery, Donaldson, Indiana.