Basilone Road

Marine Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone, born in nineteen sixteen into an Italian-American family of ten children in Raritan, New Jersey, became a celebrated war hero. He received the Medal of Honor for his efforts on Guadalcanal, where he manned a heavy machine gun for three days and nights without sleep or rest, inflicted heavy casualties, and repulsed an attack by nearly three thousand Japanese soldiers. After returning home as a hero and celebrity and touring the country to promote the sale of War Bonds, he felt out of place and asked to return to the war. Stationed at Camp Pendleton in nineteen forty-three, he was eventually allowed to return to combat in December of nineteen forty-four. On Iwo Jima, serving as leader of a machine-gun section, he single-handedly destroyed an enemy machine-gun emplacement that had pinned down his unit, then guided an American tank through a mine field under heavy fire before being killed by Japanese mortar shrapnel. Following his death in nineteen forty-five, he was awarded the Navy Cross and Purple Heart. The Secretary of the Navy praised his extraordinary heroism and unwavering devotion to duty throughout the bitter conflict, and he was the only enlisted U.S. Marine to receive the Medal of Honor, Navy Cross, and Purple Heart during World War Two.

California · United States