September 6, 2020
- Marine Scout and Snipers Valor in WWII Saipan
- VVA Charles S. Kettles Post 310 and the township of Ypsilanti, MI Annual Suicide Awareness Project
"40 Thieves" and Suicide Awareness Prevention
Marines Scout and Snipers Behind Enemy Lines in Saipan
An elite platoon of Marine Scout-Snipers, Lieutenant Frank Tachovsky’s “40 Thieves” were chosen for their willingness to defy rules and beat all-comers. When two Marines got into a fight, the loser ended up in the infirmary, the winner in the brig. Tachovsky wanted the winner on his team—a brush with military law was a recommendation.
These full-blooded men were trained in a ruthless array of hand-to-hand killing techniques and then thrown into the battle for Saipan—Emperor Hirohito’s “Treasure” and the bulwark of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific—where they would wreak havoc in and around, but mostly behind, enemy lines. They witnessed inhuman atrocities; walked into an ambush after the cunning Japanese used wounded Marines as bait; endured body-punishing extremes of heat, hunger, and thirst; fought a relentless enemy who would not surrender; and watched best friends die.
Now Tachovsky’s son Joseph tells their remarkable story—a story he didn’t even know until after his father’s death—reported from an extensive documentary record, including priceless mementos his father kept, and from exhaustive interviews with survivors who served under Lieutenant “Ski.”
Suicide Awareness Prevention
VVA Charles S. Kettles Chapter 310 is teaming up with Ypsilanti Township to put out 22 crosses every day for 30 days. We have a process for doing that that makes the task fairly simple to do well in less than a half hour. It goes better with two people, and the more the merrier, at least to a point.
If you are in the Southeast Michigan area and would like to help put crosses up on one of those days, please click on the following link and sign up for an open date that works for you. We’d like it very much if the crosses are put up at 10:00 a.m. each day, so that the progression appears as relentless as the suicide rate. But, we do understand if you need to do it at a different time.
Here is the link: www.signupgenius.com
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