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‘Path of Valor’ Solves World War II Military Mystery

George Derryberry joins us to talk about his book Path Of Valor: A Marine’s Story.

In 1962, Lee Reynolds, a Marine, was on a work detail at Camp Lejeune, destroying old military equipment.  He discovered an old canteen with an inscription scratched on the surface:

SURIBACHI TAKEN I’M

               ON IT. KILLED 3 JAPS

               IWO JIMA ROUF GO

               MOVING ON TO CAVES

               IF I DON’T MAKE IT

               BACK TELL BETTY

               H. C. Ayres

               23rd Marines

               2/23/1945

Reynolds kept the canteen instead of destroying it, and then he spent years trying to find out what happened to the soldier who’d etched the message.  Eventually Reynolds gave the canteen to his friend George Derryberry, who also searched for the canteen’s owner.  Derryberry eventually learned that Ayers had died during the battle at Iwo Jima, and the canteen may very well have been his final message to the world.  But who was Betty?  Did she know about the message?

Derryberry talked to family, friends and fellow servicemen who knew Ayers, and finally found answers.  In his book Path of Valor: A Marine’s Story he recounts Ayers’s life and the Pacific Theater battles Ayers and other Marines fought in.

From the book description:

In 1945, United States Marine Sergeant Harris C. Ayres of the Twenty-Third Marines etches an enigmatic message on his canteen as the battle for Iwo Jima rages around him. Decades later, author and former marine George Derryberry finds the same canteen, still bearing Ayres’s undelivered message. The discovery sparks an intense investigation, as an intrigued Derryberry reconstructs the life and service of Harris Ayres and struggles to decipher the meaning behind the canteen’s message. Through interviews with surviving members of the Twenty-Third Marines and painstaking studies of military records and operational reports, Derryberry reveals the story of Ayres and his small unit as they move and fight with the Fleet Marine Force Pacific. Harris Ayres fought in four of the most savage battles in military history. The young machine gunner and squad leader was present as the Fourth Marine Division captured Roi-Namur, Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima. Resistance at each island was fierce, as the marines fought a well-trained enemy willing to die before surrendering an inch of ground. Through Derryberry’s extensive research, Sergeant Ayres’s military service comes to life in vivid detail, even as it raises questions. What was the meaning of Ayres’s message, so important to the Marine he scratched it onto his canteen in the short breaks between combat? Who was Betty, the woman mentioned in the message? And did Marine Sergeant Ayres come home, or did he, as so many of his comrades did, pay the ultimate sacrifice on the sands of Iwo Jima? Path of Valor: A Marine’s Story puts a personal face on one of the greatest challenges ever undertaken by the US Marines. A tale of honor, courage, and sacrifice, Sergeant Ayres’s tale stands as a tribute to the thousands of men who fought and died for us in the dark days of World War II.