[MSSC6644]

One of the very few “stories” Dad would tell us about his experience was that he lost all of the first group of corpsmen and writing those letters home was among the most difficult of duties he had.

[ken5050]

After 1944, The Marines had pretty much fixed on the standard 13 man squad, with one corpsman attached to it..althoguh of course once combat started, especially like the hell at Iwo, organization rapidly broke dow.n

Statistically, once could infer that thus that 1/14, or 7% of MoH awarded at Iwo would go to corpsmen; instead, it's 20%. That alone tells you something..

If you read the citations for the corpsmen here there's one common element..exposing themselves to enemy fire with absolute disregard for their own life. In some ways, they are deserving of a higher-order MoH, if such a thing were possible..