Charles A. "Red" Beam, North Salt Lake, Utah: an interview by Winston Erickson, July 11, 2001, American West Center : Saving the Legacy tape nos. SL-259 & 260

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Charle A. "Red" Beam july 11 2001 boat, and that coxswain had got it up again t the reef, and it had a big h le in it, and it was starting to ink. While me and my buddies could swim back to the hip , the boat crew can't. I said, "All right, everybody to the beach." Now there was coconut log walls two or three feet high all the way around the island. I got up next to the coconut log walls, and I'm hunched down there. Some marine corporal come up and said, "Corne on, let's go." I said, "Screw you. U.S. Navy- ! ain't going over that wall. You're crazy." The next guy in there has a big white bird on his hat, the senior officer on the beach. He threw me a walkie-talkie. And he says, "Can you read me, son?" And I said, "Yes, sir." And he said, "Come with me." "Yes, sir." So I ended up as Colonel Shupe's walkie-talkie operator. And he ran-we got a congressional medal for the way he ran that operation. A wonderful man. We got up late the next day, and we were up against what had been-what was a Japanese strong point. But the bombs had blown the sand off of it, so that there was just coconut log walls there. Well, the Japs could poke their rifles through , but they couldn't aim them, right? Shupe got shot in the legs five times. I never got touched. Early on, we would come under sniper fire. What we were in was what was left of a cement building. I went to the back window, what was left of the back window. I canied a thirty ought six at that time. And I just sat there, and I said, "I'll see him here pretty ... " Well, all of a sudden I could see his hat go by another window in a destroyed building. I thought, well, I'm not going to shoot at his hat. He'll put his head up here pretty soon. And he did, and I 53