Mobile Museum | Asan Wall | Gov Reception

Liberation 1999

A member of a visiting group of WWII veterans in July 1999, on the 55th anniversary of the liberation of Guam, found his comrade's name on the Asan Wall at the National Park Service's memorial.

Carlisle Evans, of Rock Island, Ill., was in B Company, 22nd Marines, First Marine Provisonal Brigade which landed on Agat and swung left to take Orote Point. He was hit on the 9th day and shipped out. He spoke about his fallen comrade Thomas J. Manning:

He was a great guy, a fine man.  He won the silver star the first day in. He had a grenade launcher and he fired into a cave, and I was covering him.  On the day he was killed,  I was a Browning automatic rifleman and Tom was my assistant carrying amo for me. As we were going across the rice paddy on Orote Peninsula we heard shooting so hit the deck. But as we went down Tom got hit. It went through his back and out his stomach and he fell on top of me. I got wounded and called for Don Lavee. Lavee and Tom and I were in the same tent in Guadacanal and then on Guam.  Lavee brought a corpman but as he was working on me the corpsman got hit in the hand,  so Don had to patch up the corpsman before they could get me patched up. When they started dragging me back the Japanese opened up with machine guns so Don threw me into a shell hole and laid on top of me until the machine gun was knocked out.

Don lives in Ft. Lauderdale, FL now. Tom was from Youngstown, Ohio.