Shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor , Mel Ogg kissed his girlfriend good-by, walked into the nearest Marine Corps recruiting office and said he wanted to fight for his country. After some no-nonsense training at boot camp he was put on a cargo ship headed for the South Pacific. The young farm boy was about to become a combat veteran the hard way—fighting.
The above sentence makes going to war sound easy and exciting. But World War II was among one of the most heinous human crimes in history. Before it was over, 16 million Americans went off to war and of those, over 400,000 didn’t come back.
Photo, Mel Ogg taking home a first place at the 2011 Copperopolis Homecoming Parade
