Wednesday, June 4, 2003 | 11:16 a.m.
Crouched low behind his .30-caliber machine gun on a beach in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Ralph Browner thought he was going to die.
Browner, a 19-year-old Marine corporal, found himself alone in a foxhole on the island of Saipan in July 1944, with orders to hold off advancing Japanese troops all night long.
"I pulled the pins out of my grenades and lined them up in the sand in front of my hole because I knew I wouldn't have time to pull the pins later," Browner said. "I knew I was going to die, but I had accepted that.
"Knowing that sooner or later it would be your time was the only way to be a good soldier. If you started thinking about your family and your home you'd crack up."
Browner, now a 78-year-old Las Vegas resident, still isn't sure how he survived what he now calls the longest night of his life, but he was successful in single-handedly keeping enemy troops from getting by him to a path that looped around behind the rest of his company.
Browner was awarded the Navy Cross for his heroism, and now serves as the National Commander of the Legion of Valor, a group whose members have been awarded one of the highest military distinctions for heroism: a Medal of Honor, a Distinguished Service Cross, a Navy Cross or an Air Force Cross.
Fifty-one members of the group are in Las Vegas beginning today for the organization's 113th reunion. The group's membership ranges from Civil War veterans through those who fought in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
"It's a special group to be a part of," said Richard Blasongame, the group's National Chaplain and a former Marine who served in the Korean War and was awarded a Navy Cross. "We try to get together once a year and everyone brings their wives and has a good time."
Blasongame earned his Navy Cross in September 1951 when he was put in command of a 16-man heavy machine gun crew on a ridgeline in east-central Korea that was being attacked from three sides.
A grenade exploded under Blasongame's last remaining machine gun emplacement, causing wounds to his hands and face. The explosion also jammed the gun's traversing mechanism, but Blasongame continued to fire by moving the tripod the gun was sitting on from side to side.
The enemy attack was broken, but only four of the 16 Marines in Blasongame's section survived. More than 280 enemy dead were counted in front of Blasongame's position.
"The Legion of Valor is a real fellowship," Blasongame said. "We don't mind sharing our stories because it's important that people know our country is worth our lives."
Sitting in his home, Browner doesn't mind recalling the bloody battles he fought in the Pacific during World War II, but there was a time when all he wanted to do was forget.
"I didn't want to think about it, but now it just plays back through my mind like an old movie I've seen hundreds of times," Browner said. "It really helped me to hear the stories of the other guys in the group, and I realized that it was something I should talk about.
"I wasn't even able to tell my wife about it until 30 years after we were married."
Browner volunteered for the Marines in December 1943, and was sent to the Pacific theater, where he was one of only 40 men out of a company of 276 who survived the battle for Tarawa Island.
In 76 hours of fighting on the island known as "one square mile of hell" 1,056 Marines were killed and 2,300 were wounded.
"It was sheer murder," Browner said. "Our boat got hit as we came in and we had to swim 2,000 yards to the beach. The machine gunners would see us and start shooting and we'd dive to the bottom and hold on to a rock until they picked out a new target.
"A lot of guys never saw it coming out there. All they heard were the bullets dancing around their heads before they died."
After surviving Tarawa, Browner next saw action in Saipan, where his company found itself ahead of other advancing units when some bad news was dropped from a Piper Cub surveillance plane.
"The pilot dropped a note tied to a wrench that said there were 300 to 500 Japanese heading our way," said Browner, whose company totaled 120 Marines.
The Marines dug in on top of a ridge and Browner was sent down a trail that dropped about 30 feet down to the beach. While the rest of the company held the ridge, Browner dug in on the beach to keep enemies from using the trail to circle behind the company.
"For a while it was real quiet, but then I heard them talking in Japanese and I knew I was in trouble," Browner said. "All through the night they came at me. I could hear them yelling, 'Japanese drink Marine blood,' and I'd yell back 'Japanese catch Marine first.' "
Browner's foxhole was about six feet from the ocean and at one point three Japanese soldiers tried to swim in close wearing loincloths and carrying only knives.
"Luckily I heard the dripping of the water from the loincloths as they came ashore," Browner said.
At another point in the night a grenade explosion jammed Browner's .30-caliber with sand, forcing him to quickly take it apart and clean it out. He field stripped the gun in 19 seconds, and was able to continue firing.
"I started to hear a buzzing, and I thought it was a tank coming up the beach at me, but as it got light I saw that it was the millions of flies buzzing on the bodies around me," Browner said.
A total of 35 dead Japanese soldiers were found around Browner's foxhole, and he was awarded the Navy Cross for holding his position and protecting the company.
Tom Richards, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and Vietnam veteran, said that he is continually awed by the stories of the other men in the Legion of Valor.
"Sometimes you don't feel worthy to be among such a group, but everyone is very down-to-earth and modest," said Richards, who was awarded a Navy Cross for his actions during the Vietnam War. "The unfortunate thing is that a lot of people don't know what these men did for them, and we're losing a lot of the veterans from World War II and Korea."
During a two-day battle in June 1969 Richards made several trips through a firefight to replenish his unit's ammunition, and took over a machine gun from a wounded Marine to repulse the attack.
Maj. Gen. Stephen Wood, Commander of the Air Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base, is scheduled to speak at the reunion banquet Saturday night at the Riviera. The group will also tour Hoover Dam and Nellis during the week.
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