He's looking for five good men -U.S. Marines-to tell it like it was. He can't replay their names or faces. Of the two who spoke to him after the ambush, one is dead and the other no longer is linked to his phone in New York. The five are out there somewhere among the nation's 300 million. where are they? David needs to know. This was an eight-man élan squad selected to carry out a mission on Guadalcanal 67 years ago. Seven witnessed the blast that blew David from the vehicle. But who and where are they? David needs to know.

Go Fish, suggested The Navy's Stone Wall to Purple Heart David, who asked the Gov to award him his medal.

Go Fish is a simple game played by children. And sometimes a way of dismissing you. I n other words, Go... do it yourself.

"Stone Wall," was Brig. Gen. Bernard Bee's description of Thomas Jackson at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 to support the Confederacy. "There is Jackson," shouted Bee, "standing like a stone wall." Hence the sobriquet, Stonewall.

Several earlier requests had gone unanswered. So after 64 years, at age 82, David Alter became unreasonably impatient and laid his case before U.S. Representative Marilyn Musgrave. The congresswoman assigned the task to Greg Burt, her constituent advocate.

David asked for his Purple Heart medal for a head wound received on Guadalcanal during WW II 67 years ago. Now time was of the essence. It happened during a combat patrol mission in 1943 He's looking for five good men --U.S. Marines--to tell it like it was. He can't replay their names or faces.They were headed into the Canal's interior. He was one of a squad of eight in back of a truck along a trail where palm trees and brush had been cleared. Seated with his back to the jungle, he failed to see an ambush in a clearing where a Jap had leveled a rifle-loaded grenade

The seven squad members "abandoned ship," jumped from the vehicle. David, snoozing with his back to the jungle on the opposite side of the moving vehicle, was somehow launched, blasted from the truck, tumbling and dropping like a sack over the side. He was rolled into a ditch to await recovery. He had not heard Atlanta Georgia's Cpl. Claude Hambrick's warning, "Alter, we're being hit."

Purpose of the inland mission was not disclosed before the "move out." Squad members speculated that we were to "take out" a big bertha cannon camouflaged in the hillside, David said. It was said that the big gun was manned by Tojo's son. Or were they to disable failed Japanese bombs? The squad's expertise comprised ground defense for the air group and all were ordinance trained.

"B******s knew we were coming" said Calvin Leon Greenberg later in a visit to David's hospitalized enclosure in a jungle tent. where David tried to relive the event. Not even the five remaining squad members came to mind. It was Cpl. Hambrick who later described the activity. Had all been sworn to secrecy? David wondered...

David was back in action a week later, the back of his head bandaged and resembling a deflated soccer ball. How it throbbed!

Repeated cases of malaria, jungle rot and "crud" and the head wound had taken its toll. David, among others, was taken by hospital ship to Auckland, New Zealand, to recuperate. He was returned to the States, his tour of active duty over. Mystery of the mission blown from his memory. But a continuing question.

He returned to school, earned a degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri, was a reporter for metropolitan newspapers, aerospace writer on the Atlas ICBM, the Apollo spacecraft and the Space Shuttle at NASA before his retirement and .

Free-lance writing. But he kept asking and trying to remember the day he was blown through the air, his mind recalling a nanosecond of flight and the words of Cpl. Hambrick: "Hit by a Jap's rifle grenade. You were sleepin'"

Attempts to learn details of his wound from the Navy Personnel Command and Marine Corps went unanswered. Time was closing in. So responding to a suggestion from a VFW member in August, 2006 David asked U.S. Rep.. Marilyn Musgrave for an assist in acquiring his Purple Heart. What followed was somewhat classic of Naval rhetoric

D. M. Martin, head of the Navy Personnel Command Retired Records Section vowed that he had reviewed available personnel and could not locate documents that David was ever wounded, OR INJURED, under which the Purple Heart can be awarded. He didn't expand on what "available" personnel said or who they were.

Then he provided a stomach-upsetting report of the head wound David had received Aug. 26, 1943, the period that David was in "...action against the enemy."

"Intracranial Injury #2543; contusion and abrasion over occipital area of scalp, etc., read the report.. He was treated with aspirin and Codeine and the wounds dressed with Sulfanilamide powder. It listed other abrasions. It didn't enumerate on theseven "stitches" needed to close thecontusion. "They were wereremovwed a few weeks later," said David

Carefully he avoided the cause other than referring to the injury as a "fall" from a truck. Nor was there documentation containing observations from the seven remaining on-board Marines.

"Fall my butt!" countered David, documenting his Marine Corps enlistment and honorable discharge that reads,..."Corporal David Alter participated in action against the enemy at Guadalcanal: from 3 April 1943 to 3 Sept.,1943. This relates to battles, engagements, skirmishes and expeditions," read the discharge document.

The wound was received Aug. 26, 1943, during the period he was in action against the enemy. .In question was the cause of the injury

"Cpl. Hambrick later told me I was blasted from the truck by a grenade" states David. "I recall a nanosecond in flight and tumbling. Memory gone I was returned to duty several days late." The quest for documentation continued. David demanded an affirmed report based on observations from those present on the mission. Then came bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. Marilyn Musgrave was sent David's personnel records, sprinkled with a few blunders, at one point listing him as a master sergeant with engineering equipment expertise. "Not so," said David. " 'never owned or operated an eight speed tractor. Nor is my name Thomas Ramey."

A Marine Corps historian then told Musgrave's constituent advocate that David should get affidavits from eye witnesses to the attack. He was provided a restricted muster roll of several hundred officers and enlisted men. Find the names of those with whom he served, single out those who witnessed the attack and search for them out there among the 301 million U.S. population.

"Ludicrous," said David. "The blow to the head erased the moment in time and identity of the five remaining Marines. And even if I could single out the 64 from which the remaining five of our eight were drawn for the mission, I wouldn't know where to start. And isn't that what you would expect the Gov to accomplish?"

Must be playing hide-and-go-seek?

Along came Kara Newcomer, a Marine Corps historian in Quantico, Virginia, with the winning suggestion that Burt contact Bary Zerby of the Modernt Military Records Textual Archives Services Division. Zerby suggested that Alter travel to the National Archives in Maryland to search for his supporting documents. In other words, :

GO FISH!

David, who'd rather fight than eat, and the powerful U.S. Representative Marilyn Musgrave, had been stonewalled.

Commenting on the government's failure to provide the Purple Heart medal to Alter, Marilyn Musgrave, U.S. Representative said, "Any soldier injured while fighting a battle for our nation should receive the Purple Heart medal, and should not be subjected to bureaucratic red tape after decades of waiting. My office has done everything possible to assist Mr. Alter in getting his long-deserved medal, just as we have done with many other veterans from Colorado."

SUMMARY:

A 1973 National Archives Fire destroyed records that might substantiate David's Purple Heart award. Or, the Gov lost or misfiled such a report.

The prestigious Marine Corps and Navy failed to document the "incident" which two members of the squad said was an ambush (not an incident); failed to document a "fall."

David is not a janitorial engineer and should not be asked to clean up Uncle
Sam's failure. It's probably too late to compile eye witness reports.