Steve Johnson

At dawn on December 7, 1941, America was at peace, although it was clear a war was coming. Nazi Germany had overrun most of Europe and was literally at the gates of Moscow. Britain was slowly starving as Nazi submarines sank the ships carrying food and medicine the British needed. Although the United States sent huge amounts of war supplies to Britain and Russia and had greatly expanded its own Army and Navy, Americans were unwilling to go to war against enemies who had never attacked us.

Alum Spring Park is a 34-acre woodland retreat off Greenbriar Drive with a playground and hiking trails. Its sandstone cliff, also known as the Alum Spring Rock, is 400 feet long and 40 feet high.

In the summer of 1942, the Japanese were winning their war with the United States. They had sunk or crippled America's battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor, and snapped up a chain of islands across the Pacific which could, if fortified, form an impenetrable barrier to the U.S. Navy. Now the Imperial Japanese Navy was looking for a knockout blow, to destroy the American aircraft carriers before American industry replaced its losses.

After bouncing all night in cold, cramped steel boats, then waiting all day in broiling heat, the men of the Allied Expeditionary Force got the word: shortly after sundown, they would finally be getting off their floating, seasick prisons.

All they had to do then was run straight into machine gun fire, smash the Nazi army, and liberate Europe.