35th Infantry (Cacti) Regiment Association


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  PVT Raymond E. Brown    In memory of our fallen brother

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother"



George Company
35th Infantry Regiment
World War II


"Not For Fame or Reward
Not For Place or For Rank
But In Simple Obedience To
Duty as They Understood It"





The 35th Infantry Regiment Association salutes our fallen brother, PVT Raymond E. Brown, who died in the service of his country on January 20th, 1943 in Guadalcanal. The cause of death was listed as KIA. At the time of his death Raymond was 23 years of age. He was from California.

The decorations earned by PVT Raymond E. Brown include: the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Asiatic-Pacific Service Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.


Burial:
National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific
Honolulu
Honolulu County
Hawaii, USA
Plot: Q 388

From Perry Balls book, "Tales of Red Marler"

He had hand-grenades strapped to his bandoliers that way they did it in the John Wayne movies. He and his foxhole partner Pfc. Clifford Dunn were laying communications wire when they got disoriented in the jungle and laid the wire into a Japanese machine-gun position. The Japanese machine-gun opened up on them and they dropped the wire reel and ran back to their lines through the jungle. One of the grenades on Pvt. Browns bandolier went off and blew his chest open. A Japanese bullet either hit the grenade and cause it to go off or the grenade got caught on the underbrush and accidentally pulled the pin. They stopped stepping the grenades to their bandoliers after that. Pfc. Marlers foxhole partner Pvt. Joseph F. DeMase blew his hand off one night when he held a ten-second grenade a few seconds before throwing it at a suspected infiltrator. Someone forgot to tell the men when a shipment of seven-second grenades arrived. Pfc. Marler and Pfc. Dunn became foxhole partners after than and a friendship of troublemakers was born. All because of two misused grenades.