FORWARD<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by Byron R. Mayo<\/p>\n DEDICATION<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n INTRODUCTION<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n ONE Family Connections<\/a><\/strong> My great-grandfather, Louis Martell, emigrated to the United States from French Canada following the American Civil War, searching for fame and fortune.<\/p>\n TWO\u00a0The Innocent Years<\/a> THREE\u00a0Life on the West Side<\/a><\/strong> FOUR\u00a0Hard Times<\/a><\/strong> FIVE\u00a0The Beat Goes On<\/a><\/strong> SIX\u00a0A New Deal<\/a><\/strong> SEVEN\u00a0Fun and Games<\/a><\/strong> EIGHT\u00a0Reality Check<\/a><\/strong> NINE\u00a0The Baggage of Yout<\/strong>h<\/a> TEN\u00a0The Adolescents<\/a><\/strong> ELEVEN\u00a0The Adolescents II<\/a><\/strong> TWELVE\u00a0Fast Changing Times<\/a><\/strong> THIRTEEN\u00a0On the Horizon<\/a><\/strong> FOURTEENTH\u00a0After Pearl Harbor<\/a><\/strong> FIFTEEN\u00a0Join the Marines<\/a><\/strong> SIXTEEN VMTB-242 I<\/a><\/strong> SEVENTEEN VMTB-242 II<\/a><\/strong>
\n<\/strong>They called me Billy. Willard Mayo was the name\u2014taken from my great grandfather.<\/p>\n
\nMy mother\u2019s lover, Clarence Neff, was a vain, gimlet-eyed, good-looking sonofabitch, with a shock of slick, dark hair combed straight back<\/p>\n
\n\u201cBrother, Can You Spare a Dime?\u201d Lyrics by Yip Harburg, 1932. At the time of the crash, my grandparents were living on the second floor of an aging two-story wooden tenement on Portland\u2019s lower east side.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cLife is just a bowl of cherries. Don\u2019t make it serious. Life\u2019s too mysterious\u2026\u201d George White’s Scandals, 1932<\/p>\n
\n\u201cJust around the comer, There\u2019s a rainbow in the sky. So let\u2019s have another cup of coffee. And let\u2019s have another piece of pie.\u201d Irving Berlin, 1932<\/p>\n
\nSomebody told me later that Otto Larsen and Eddie Daniels ran a tight ship when they were at sea.<\/p>\n
\nWhat\u2019s the matter with us? No country ever had more and no country ever had less.<\/p>\n
\nAt the hospital on that critical night, the doctors stitched up my left arm\u2014and they rushed.<\/p>\n
\nIn the beginning, I thought the worst part of my new job was crawling out of bed at three o\u2019clock in the morning.<\/p>\n
\nThe pursuit of girls took an awful lot of time and energy during my last two years of high school.<\/p>\n
\nWhen we were kids, we imitated him by holding pocket combs under our noses and stretching our arms out in a stiff salute.<\/p>\n
\nAdolf Hitler, the triumphal conqueror, now controlled the bulk of Western Europe-\u2014from the Pyrenees to the Arctic Circle, from the Atlantic to beyond the Vistula. Great Britain now stood alone.<\/p>\n
\nAdolf Hitler made two enormous blunders that led eventually to the downfall of Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n
\nThe first American beachhead landing of World War II came in the early fall of 1942 when U.S. Marines stormed ashore at Guadalcanal.<\/p>\n
\nThe location turned out to be in barren desert country west of the Algodones dunes, a few miles outside the grubby, sun-baked town of El Centro.<\/p>\n
\nOur squadron went on the attack in support of the Third U.S. War Bond Drive. We bombed El Centro with \u201cBuy War Bonds\u201d leaflets.<\/p>\n