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David Phillips

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After a fast trip home from North Africa, David Phillips was sent to Maryland to test a newly designed torpedo since he had been trained as a Torpedoman. He was amazed at the new high-tech weapon and delighted with the liberty in Washington. (3:16)

David Potter

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There was no set end date for the Navy recruits to graduate from basic training, so it seemed to David Potter that "they graduated a class anytime they sank a ship." From there, he went to Engineering and Diesel schools and prepared to serve on an LCI, Landing Craft Infantry. (4:36)

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The brand new landing craft was small enough to travel from the shipyard on Lake Huron, through the Chicago Canal to the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, and down to the Gulf of Mexico. After making their way to the west coast, David Potter and the rest of the crew repeatedly invaded California beaches in preparation for joining the war in the Pacific. (4:20)

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"We trained 14 months to fight 82 days," says David Potter, who tended the engines on a landing craft that delivered soldiers to the Okinawa invasion. He was relieved that their anti-submarine strategy, which called for the unescorted craft to ram the attacker, never had to be implemented. There were daily air attacks, as well as Kamikaze boats, a strange new menace. (7:14)

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David Potter tells how his ship, a landing craft, participated in the battle of Okinawa, first landing troops on the beach and then conducting search and rescue and laying smoke screens. Then, his ship was assigned an unusual task which disturbed him so much that he couldn't speak of it for fifty years. (8:43)

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Before David Potter headed home from the Pacific, he saw for himself the devastation of Japanese cities, and the gracious nature of the defeated Japanese people. Finding no good job prospects after the war, he re-enlisted and served out his career on a variety of ships. (8:10)

David Reiss

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David Reiss describes the types of care his hospital unit would provide for combat troops in Italy, and recalls one incident with a German bomber. (2:18)

Daymon Mathis

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After taking over Hitler's hometown of Berchtesgaden, Germany, Daymon Mathis recalls discovering maternity barracks for Hitler Youth children. (1:00)

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Daymon Mathis describes "beginning to know what war was" while making his way through France after landing at Normandy on D-Day and taking shrapnel from a German artillery round seven days later, for which he earned a Purple Heart. (7:33)

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Daymon Mathis shares some of the combat and horrors he experienced during the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944. (8:18)