Eddie Albert was a true hero. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I believe he was in the Navy and saw marines getting shot up pretty bad on the beaches of Tarawa (?). Made dozens of trips under heavy fire in a small boat (may have been a rubber dinghy with an outboard) to pull wounded Marines out of the water.
More detail on Lee Marvin - he was wounded at Saipan when most of his platoon was killed. He was a Marine sniper. Jack Palance’s rugged face was largely a result of facial reconsctruction surgery after his B17 crash. And the senior George Bush was a Navy pilot who was shot down in the Pacific; his crew members both died. He also described an incident where he was standing on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier when a plane crash landed, and the debris sliced a man in half who was standing just a few feet from him. He says he still has nightmares of his war experiences.