Robert Arthur Arndt

Photo courtesy of Daniel Pushman

Robert Arndt was born and raised in Michigan, part of a large family headed by parents Adam and Emma. Adam, a Russian-born conservation officer employed by the state, had his hands full even before Emma passed away in 1937, leaving him to support ten children (with the assistance of the older siblings).

Arndt enlisted in the Marine Corps a week before his eighteenth birthday. He was packed off to the San Diego recruit depot, where he learned the basics of Marine training; having scored well on his aptitude tests, the young private was chosen to attend communication school at the base. He was promoted to Private First Class while under instruction at the Telephone School in January 1944, and the following spring was sent overseas as a replacement for the First Battalion, 14th Marines.

PFC Arndt ran cable and monitored land communications for the artillery regiment during the battles of Saipan and Tinian; in the fall of 1944 he was one of a number of Marines transferred to infantry regiments – in Arndt’s case, the 24th Marines. His combat experience made him a valuable asset to the headquarters of the regiment’s First Battalion, especially as his duties were essentially unchanged. The only wrinkle was that he would be much closer to the front lines – no small implication for a Marine preparing for the invasion of Iwo Jima.

PFC Arndt served through the battle of Iwo Jima as a lineman with Headquarters Company; he survived unwounded and spent the rest of the war with the communications platoon. He was honorably discharged on October 1, 1945.

Robert Arndt returned to Michigan; he died in 1999 and is buried in Ostego Lake Township Cemetery.